Aug 25, 2008

Can an Affiliate Manager Really Know Nothing about Affilate Marketing?

Last week I had an email conversation with an affiliate manager and just had to post it verbatim for your reading pleasure. I left in all the typos and spelling errors just for fun. Oh and I omitted the names, too. I'm not that cold ;)

--- Original Message Separator ---

Hey Tony,

I emailed you last week and still havent heard back from you.

I was going through our list of Publishers to verify our the placement of our banners on thier sites. Can you please direct me to where our banner is on your site?

Thanks

Affiliate Manager

--- Original Message Separator ---

Affiliate Manager,

We typically get hundreds of emails through the CJ Mail, and aren't able to respond to all, so please feel free to email directly at <email address>.

As to your question, we are a Paid Search Affiliate. We generate traffic via paid search and not via banner placement.

Tony

--- Original Message Separator ---

Hey Tony,

Thanks for your email. Can you send me a link so I can go through the steps that a customer would to go through you and get to us to make a purchase?

Thanks

Affiliate Manager

--- Original Message Separator ---

Affiliate Manager,

My apologies, I did not explain our process very well. I cannot 'show' you a link. We purchase paid search ads in Google, Yahoo and MSN then create ad copy that links back to our merchant partners. Once they click on the link in the ad, they are taken immediately to your site where they complete the transaction.

Tony

--- Original Message Separator ---

Hey Tony,

Thank you for your quick response. So what can I type to search for in Google, Yahoo, and MSN and what would be what I see of yours coming into play from a customer pespective as a means to getting to our site.

Thanks again

Affiliate Manager

--- Original Message Separator ---

Affiliate Manager,

As a company policy I cannot give out the keywords that we use. The value that a PPC advertiser brings to the table is our ability to create keyword lists and ad copy that converts. If we share that info, our value is lost. Is there something specific that you are concerned with?

Tony

--- Original Message Separator ---

Hey Tony,

Thank you again for your response. We are in the process of refining our list of publishers so as to filter out those that would be recieving commissions on orders that we would normally get paid the full amount of the sale on.All I am asking is to see how your company is driving sales for us so we can intern get you more commissions paid. The easiest way I can see to do that is going the route of the customer and experiencing how, first hand, I would get to my own site by the means of your business. Do you have any other suggestions on how this can be communicated? Also, the way we are set up through Commission Junction, is not pay per click, it is pay per order. Im not sure if that helps or not.

Thanks again

Affiliate Manager

--- Original Message Separator ---

Affiliate Manager,

It sounds like you may not really understand your publishers and honestly it also sounds like you are looking for ways to take these sales in house rather than paying publishers, which is precisely why I won't give out my keywords.

We have only produced $70 this year to date in commissions from your program so honestly the opportunity isn't worth the time to get into a discussion on the value of PPC affiliates. We will just stop promoting the program immediately.

Tony

So, in review... first we have a situation where the affiliate manager obviously does not know their publishers, does not know anything about Paid Search or what value a PPC affiliate can bring to their program.

Second, the merchant is trolling for ways to cut publishers out of the loop in general. Why don't Search Affiliates give out their converting keywords? The value of the PPC affiliate is that they can create a list converting keywords that you didn't come up with on your own.

Lesson 1: Whether your business is Affiliate Marketing, Performance Marketing or really any other on or off-line business, you really should understand your industry especially before you contact your partners.

Lesson 2: There will always be partners who believe they are paying affiliates for sales they would have generated on their own and are looking for ways to cut the affiliates out. This is a slippery slope and in my mind the downfall of any good affiliate program.

Whether they fully understand or not, I do not believe their inquiry is out of line. You could have selected a non-performing yet still showing long-tail keyword so they could run the example and you would not have hurt anything. The issue that arises when you want to reveal nothing is that AMs seem to assume the worst...day-parting, TM bidding, x-geo ads - even crap that is not possible, but they have made up in their minds.

I do know why you may want to protect your top KWs, but I am sure you could have found an example that did not cut your throat.

I must agree though for a $70 program, I would not have even had that long of a dialogue.

The first problem is exactly what you state..."that AMs seem to assume the worst." This business is all about relationships and when you start off the dialogue with that assumption you start off on the wrong foot.

The second problem is that you may understand the nature of the long tail but this AM clearly did not. Seeing Keywords wasn't going to tell them anything, especially if I picked one that non-performing. If they had wanted to see ad copy I could understand, but that's not what they asked for.